Culture & History Digital Journal

Introduction: Transformations and Urban Development in the Modern Greater Caribbean

2025-11-25T08:32:57+01:00

Enlightenment ideas and police actions in San Juan de Puerto Rico under the government of Miguel Antonio de Ustáriz (1789-1792)

2024-05-07T11:14:01+02:00

The ideas of the Enlightenment arrived in Puerto Rico a little later than in other Hispanic American territories, and had their heyday under the government of Miguel de la Torre (1823-1837). However, they were already known and put into practice on the island during the second half of the eighteenth century through, for instance, some of the police measures implemented by several governors and captain-generals of that period. In order to identify this type of actions, which aimed at achieving greater control over the population and improving the island’s infrastructure, territorial planning and urban configuration, this article analyses Governor Miguel Antonio de Ustáriz’s management of the city of San Juan de Puerto Rico between 1789 and 1792.

The resignification of space in the colonial city: public squares and memorial in Havana (1812-1834)

2024-05-03T12:58:25+02:00

The emergence of modern politics and its forms of manifestation in public space shaped the meaning of certain urban areas of Havana in the period from 1812 to 1834. The analysis of different monumental memorial projects, their materialization and their location in certain spaces, such as the Plaza Vieja or the Plaza de Armas, helps to understand this phenomenon of the early era of modern politics. Through this mechanism, ideological discourses emanating from the public space are reformulated and linked to existing tendencies, mainly political liberalism or absolutism. The documentation consulted for this research was obtained from the General Archive of the Indies, the National Historical Archive, the Historical Archive of the Office of the Historian of Havana and the National Library of Cuba.

Notes for a history of urbanism in the Southern Caribbean. Typologies, methods, and problems for a new city model

2024-04-19T14:27:18+02:00

The main objective of this article is to analyze several problems linked to the concept of city in the context of the Southern coast of the Caribbean, understanding that in this area, cities that share historical, social or cultural episodes converge. The analysis of the cases of Cartagena and Portobelo will be of particular relevance, as they are two of the main examples of cities where different urban, social and cultural problems converged. The objective is to demonstrate that the concept of city was articulated from the combination of different elements related to the social organization of urban planning, the hierarchy of the different buildings.

From fishing village to logistics city. Port infrastructures in the construction, control, and conflict of the urban space of Progreso (1856-1920)

2024-10-25T13:12:57+02:00

This article analyzes how port infrastructure contributed to consolidating Progreso as a logistics city. It focuses on three objectives: to explain its founding, to analyze the incorporation of infrastructure into the urban space, and to identify conflicts and tensions generated at the port. The research is based on archival documents, newspapers, pamphlets, travelers’ accounts, images, and maps. The results indicate that Progreso’s urban development of Progreso, through urban facilities and urbanization, was not completed during the period studied; however, its intense port activity and infrastructure turned the port into a logistics city. Urban land was disputed by actors interested in establishing railways, docks, warehouses, and storage facilities, and in appropriating it through concessions or even illegally, which led to conflicts among private parties and with authorities at different levels of government.

Crossed histories of the Honduran Caribbean: Republican urbanism and the banana Company town in Tela, 1876-1977

2024-03-11T14:36:56+01:00

This article addresses the urban dichotomy that arose in Tela, a port in Honduras, after the arrival of the United Fruit Company in 1913. This process was characterized by the segregation of the original town, called Tela Viejo, from Tela Nuevo, headquarters of the banana company. This urban juxtaposition revealed two different conceptions of territorial occupation. On the one hand, that of the State of Honduras, through the founding of this new city in 1876, with its primary urban functions, within the so-called pre-progressive urbanism. Morphologically, Tela had a compact urban model of Hispanic style, but with republican elements, as well as features of the British colonial architecture common in the Caribbean. On the other hand, the United Fruit Company promoted industrial and zoning urbanism, introducing modernities in communications and capitalist dynamics. Important migrations are triggered, which contribute to the local culture. This urban reality also materialized other social, national and ethnic differences, with the American members of Tela Nuevo prevailing, encountering an amalgamation of native, mestizos, migrants, black and mulatto settlers established in Tela Viejo. Although they were built separately, the interaction of their inhabitants gave rise to a new and distinctive Caribbean cultural syncretism.

From bohíos to social housing: authoritarian modernization and urban transformation in Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic (1930-1961)

2024-08-20T18:43:14+02:00

This paper focuses on the housing policy of Santo Domingo during the Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961) by contextualizing historical and material conditions in which it was developed, with urban sprawl as a backdrop. The housing policies were accompanied by a nationalist discourse that sought to nationalize the rural population migrating towards the city. Consequently, wooden houses known as bohíos were forbidden and demolished. Along with the process of import substitution industrialization, the construction of state dwelling began. Its main goal was to increase the mass of workers employed in the industry and the state bureaucracy while guaranteeing a pro-regime landowner network.

A Monumental Controversy: The Memorial for the Victims of Franco’s Regime in Madrid

2024-10-10T17:53:06+02:00

The memory of the war and dictatorship in Spain and its representation in public spaces have been the subject of intense debate and controversy since 2000. This article focuses on the construction process of a memorial in the Almudena Cemetery (Madrid, Spain). It was initially planned to commemorate the victims of the dictatorship under General Francisco Franco in the city between 1939 and 1944, but this meaning became distorted during its construction. The research combines qualitative methodology techniques such as interviews, participant observation and document analysis. After describing the construction and resignification of the memorial, the text then examines the actions of resistance undertaken by victims' relatives, memorial collectives, academics and artists in the face of the institutional policy of silence at the city council level. The text supports the theories that understand that the shaping of collective memory in public space is an open process, often conflictive and subject to new appropriations. We understand that memory is not petrified in stone, but that it is a work that requires the participation of different actors and the design of permanent and/or performative strategies that give (or return) historical, ethical and pedagogical content to the monument.

The Album de Oro de Puerto Rico (1939): Photography and Propaganda at the Dawn of Puerto Rican Developmentalism

2025-01-18T17:12:12+01:00

Towards the end of the 1930s, the government of Puerto Rico faced a crossroads in its eagerness to consolidate a promotional and public relations project to boost tourism activity as a new engine of island development. Initiatives such as the new Puerto Rico Tourism Institute and the impressive investment activity in housing, electrification, and health projects through New Deal programs such as the Puerto Rico Emergency Recovery Administration (PRERA) and the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA), collided with another reality conditioned by the absentee monoculture scheme. the sugarcane strikes, and a nationalist resistance movement that would fuel the repression of the state and reach a bloody climax in the Ponce Massacre of 1937. At this juncture, the government will see a strategic opportunity in an official propaganda project proposed by Cuban publishers Antonio Escámez Gutiérrez and Antonio M. Monteagudo. The Álbum de Oro de Puerto Rico (1939), contrary to prevailing opinions, was a propaganda project, aimed at cleaning up the battered image of the government in the context of a Pan-Americanist discourse in support of the hegemony of the United States in a hemisphere on the verge of World War II.

The border spaces of the European Community in audiovisual fiction: The case of Iberian television series

2025-04-29T19:24:22+02:00

Greater collaboration between the Spanish and Portuguese audiovisual industries in the form of co-productions for television channels has been seen in recent years. This is evidence of a shared audience and the public's interest in this type of content. This paper seeks to analyse the representations of the territories filmed in these co-productions. This analysis is based on an exhaustive review of eleven television series and 1,762 clips shot on location. The geographical methodological approach provides a more complete vision of Iberian co-productions, as well as the depiction of the geographical areas in question. This methodology can be applied to other geographical contexts and contribute to the understanding of cross-border dynamics in the audiovisual field. The primary findings demonstrate that these co-productions effectively expand their audience, showcasing the tangible impact of European policies that promote and facilitate cross-border collaboration. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis of the clips has revealed that the majority of the co-productions reflect a combination of contemporary narratives with historical urban contexts, thus enabling the city patterns to be defined according to their characteristics. Finally, the geographical distribution of the scenes shows that border regions are still underrepresented, with the exception of the Galicia-North Portugal corridor, one of the largest conurbations on the Iberian Peninsula. We therefore advocate for greater inclusion of depopulated and rural areas to foster a more comprehensive cultural and geographical narrative.

Gas heating and comfort in European middle-class homes: case study of the United Kingdom, France, and Spain (ca. 1850-ca. 1920)

2025-05-19T10:53:08+02:00

In the Second Technological Revolution, not only did the West see the development of new strategic industrial sectors, as chemistry, oil, and electricity, but it also witnessed the birth of competition between companies to reach a broader public. In the energy sector, gas companies, which had benefitted till then from monopolistic control of the market, saw the appearance of a fierce competitor: electricity. Therefore, they took the chance to get subscribers, linking their services to bourgeois comfort, which they unsuccessfully tried to extend to the working class. In order to do so, they developed relevant publicity campaigns, in which they insisted on the improvement of homes thanks to gas appliances. In this article, we study the marketing strategies that they deployed for expanding particularly the use of gas heating in Western Europe. We focus on the British, the French, and the Spanish case, as the three countries lived under different circumstances, and they consequently illustrate the different ways in which publicity, linked to gas, evolved.

The tenor and the sound merchant: A history between operas, phonographs and popular scenes (Mexico City, 1901)

2025-04-21T17:54:01+02:00

In 1901, the tenor Miguel Lelo de Larrea entered into various agreements and commercial operations with the talking machine businessman Joaquín Espinosa. In addition to buying him a phonograph and more than a dozen cylinders with national and foreign pieces, he made 203 recordings under his supervision. In this article, I reconstruct a microhistory of the functioning of the phonographic market in Mexico City, at the beginning of the 20th century, using as the axis of analysis the relationships established between both individuals. The questions I address on this journey are as novel as they are fascinating. First, explore the price of phonographs and the different Espinosa competitors dedicated to selling them. As a second contribution, I reveal new titles of popular and cultured recordings that were part of the catalogs of the time and I expose their meanings, social uses and costs in relation to other basic consumer products. Finally, it examines the payments received by the tenor for recording hundreds of pieces, contrasting these figures with the salaries of his contemporaries. This practice allows me to demonstrate that operatic recordings heard in Mexico are not always imported from the United States and Europe.